How often is it that you meet a Steeler fan in a desolate state with a garbage football team and that hockey stuff that writes for the same site you do? I went up to a guy wearing B+G in a local bar that was filled with Lions fans and handed him a Stillers.com card telling to check the site and he tells me that HE writes for the site. I had a couple of pops in me at the time so it took a couple clock cycles to register what he was telling me. "huh? What? you do? what? you're kidding!"
Have fun at the Stillers/Bungholes game Still Desi!
"I think we have a lot of talent out there who can make plays," Gildon said. "The less thinking we have to do out there, the better."
-the Trib, Aug. 31st, 2003
In order to perform a task, be it a particular function at your job, playing a musical instrument, doing mathematics, at the utmost, a person has to use his mind to integrate knowledge he's learned and create using that knowledge. That's logical. To be good, to be efficacious, at a complex task, the individual who is learning this task or method has to build HIMSELF, his mental capacity, his technique, his concentration up to the level the task reqires. This doesn't happen without the use of the gray matter.
In any of those functions listed above, is it preferable to take the task and lower the quality, make it easier (read: simpler)? What if Tommy Franks had said to Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and President Bush, �The less thinking my men have to do the better.� Would that be a 21st solution to a problem? Of course it wouldn't be. The military encourages adaptation and innovation. Otherwise, it�s a potentially quick exit for that troop or commander. The leader of these squads would be charged moreso than the troops he commands with using his brain to innovate and keep his troops safe and his combat performance high.
Would the human race get anywhere if our fine Universities dumbed down their curricula so that only the slowest students were the ones who set the pacing of the classes? That would be unacceptable to anyone who willfully paid good money to get an education in a difficult field like chemistry or engineering. The high acheivers would sit back and either coast or get angry at this short shrifting of their potential. There will always be people who want to soar. Keeping them chained to mediocrity may even ruin them, depriving themselves of greatness and the world their contributions. In a group setting, such as a football team, the responsiblity of the leaders in the organization is to keep the stallions fed mentally and physically, to keep them reaching for the carrot.
The way to avoid going the route of the loser is NOT to allow things to be dumbed down to the point where things are too easy, it's to make things difficult enough so that there can be a mental base for the individual athlete to build upon. I read something interesting in the 2003 media guide, Brent Alexander went to college on a computer science scholarship. (maybe my theory falls apart here) Greg Lloyd studied electrical engineering (I have no idea what his grades were) in college. This shows that Lloyd had an interest in the mental aspects of life. That is a difficult field of study that requires long hours of concentration and learning. It's impressive he took on that kind of course load and played football. I guarantee his intellectual curiosity carried over into his play on the field and his philosophy of pain tolerance, high impact and intimidation. The man of the mind sees things and situations differently, conflict as opportunity, failure as a guiding light, nonsense as something to be avoided.A player just can't be a slob sitting around with nothing going on between the ears and having the coaches give up on him and just put together game plans for morons. Maybe the scrubs and second stringers, but not the players who excel. I don't need to list the qualifications of Russell, Ham, Lambert, Woodruff, White.
Is the problem we see on the field Coach Cowher not feeding his player's brains enough? Are they getting off too easy?
Is coach Cowher missing this CRUCIAL part of coaching? Woody Hayes didn't put up with academic slackers. In "Complete Linebacking", Lou Tepper says that "when a coach lacks intelligent linebackers, it really limits how well a defense can perform. A team with more than one poor student at linebacker is less able to make checks and adjustments." I have read quotes from Kendrell and seen interviews with him and he seems pretty bright and has a great attitude about achievement. It can only translate into better performance. I wonder if he's happy with the dumbing down of the defense, as happy and as obviously complacent as his defensive captian, Jason Gildon. Something really bothers me about that quote from Gildon. I criticize Gildon for his lack of passion, but this idea that dumbing down the playbook leads to better defense is just flat out stupid. Is there anyone with the natural gifts of Lawrence Taylor on this defensive football team? I don't think Parcells would feel the need to lower his playbook and game plan to his dumbest players, he wouldn't put up with mediocrity. I realize what Gildon is saying is that the player shouldn't have to think, just react. It's been suggested that this is just Gildon sucking up to Coach. But is he correct?
Who is running this team? If Cowher's philosophy is that a defensive player is at his peak when he's not thinking, then who is thinking out there? The computer scientist Brent Alexander? The co-captain of the defense has said that it is important that he not think, so it must be someone else. But Coach Cowher has kept players on the sidelines because they were "out there thinking too much". Would this explain the lack of any sort of complex scheme and the ability for opposing teams to dictate the game. The goal of a defense is to dictate it's will on the opponent, to cause the offense to do things that it doesn't do well. When was the last time that happened with the Steelers? The Chiefs ran well, the Raiders passed well. I fear what Bulger might do when the Stillers meet the Rams.
"We feel more comfortable than we were last year," Gildon said. "They've done a good job of keeping it, pretty much, real basic, letting the guys just go out and play fast. I think that is definitely going to help us once the season starts."